THE driver of a van which mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona leaving 14 dead may be on the run, Spanish police fear.

The authorities said last night Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan, has yet to be traced following the terror attacks in Las Ramblas.

However, at a press conference yesterday Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared police have broken the “terrorist cell from Barcelona” after five members were killed, four were in detention and two were almost certainly killed in an explosion.

He said no new attacks were imminent, that they will be maintaining the country's terrorist threat alert at level four, and security at popular events and tourist sites around the country will be reinforced.

Catalan Police spokesman Albert Oliva later confirmed a manhunt is underway for any remaining members of the Islamic extremist cell, with the search focused on Abouyaaqoub. He said officers have carried out nine searches of properties in Ripoll, the northern Catalan town where Abouyaaqoub and other suspects lived.

Abouyaaqoub has been named in Spanish media as the suspected driver of the van, which was used in the massacre on Las Ramblas that left 14 dead and nearly 130 injured.

Another suspect Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils in the early hours of Friday morning. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead jihadists are yet to be confirmed by police.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Said Oukabir, the father of the Oukabir brothers, said he was "in shock" that his sons were suspected of involvement in the attacks.

His sons had shown no sign of radicalisation, he added at his home in Melouiya, a village high in Morocco's Atlas Mountains.

"They lived like the young people of their age, dressed like them," the father said.

Some 34 nationalities were among almost 130 people wounded in the attacks in Las Ramblas and in Cambrils, which lies around 70 miles to the south west.

Authorities said 54 people injured in the attacks were still in hospital on Saturday, with 12 in a critical condition and 25 in a serious condition.

It comes after police revealed the terrorists behind the rampage were preparing bigger attacks, with a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar believed to have robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

Catalan regional police official Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters on Friday: "We think they were preparing at least one or more attacks in Barcelona.

"The explosion in Alcanar at least avoided some of the material they were counting on to carry out even bigger attacks than the ones that happened. Because of that the attack in Barcelona and the one in Cambrils were carried out in a bit more rudimentary way than the one they had initially planned."

Police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France, according to French media.

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils took place around eight hours apart on Thursday afternoon and in the early hours of Friday.